


Footprints in the Snow

by DarylDixonGrimes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: AU where the Saviors/Negan just aren't there, Christmas fic, Cute Dads, Hugs, Hunting, Kissing, M/M, Rickyl, Snow, but that hug got all up in here, hand holding, they're in love, this story was supposed to be something entirely different, two dudes in the woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 23:51:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8868058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarylDixonGrimes/pseuds/DarylDixonGrimes
Summary: Daryl and Rick go hunting together in the snow. 
A Christmas fic.





	

Winter was the best part of the apocalypse. Or it was now that the group had homes and working heat. The walkers were slowed tremendously by low temperatures, lessening the threat of another large herd, and everyone in Alexandria seemed content to gather around the town’s electric fireplaces in groups, sipping hot drinks and chatting long into the night.   
  
The past few days had been even more special. A mild winter storm had hit, blanketing the world in a pristine coat of white that covered over the dirtier parts of the new world. Kids bundled up in whatever they could find and made snow angels on the lawns.   
  
Even Daryl had gotten in on the action before he and Rick had headed out. The hunter had teamed up with Carl to make a giant snowman right outside their home, both of them wrapped up in scarves made out of a cut up beach towel. Rick had looked on, holding Judith’s hand while she toddled around the yard in rain boots up to her butt, giggling with glee while Rick showed her how to catch snowflakes on her tongue.   
  
Her laughter had been so infectious Daryl hadn’t been able to keep himself from smiling while he helped Carl roll the biggest part of their man into place.   
  
Once the snowman was complete with a wooden spoon for a nose and a single bottle cap eye, Rick and Daryl left Carl and Judith inside by the fireplace with hot cocoa and canned peaches before loading up their packs and heading out of the gate on foot.   
  
Daryl’s boots crunched with every step in the snow, his treads compacting it and leaving distinct impressions in the bottom of each crater he created. Rick followed his feet, his own boots slightly altering each of Daryl’s footprints to create something entirely new.  

The two made it to the woods in no time, and Daryl glanced back at the walls behind them, admiring the almost perfect swath of white between the edge of the trees and the gate.

“Something wrong?” Rick asked, and Daryl looked back at him too, bundled in his wool-lined coat and another one of their makeshift scarves. A terry cloth tropical fish seemed to disappear into his beard. Daryl shook his head.   
  
“Nah,” he said, playfully looking Rick up and down before turning back toward the woods. “Just admiring the scenery.”

“Flirt,” Rick said.

“Ain’t,” Daryl countered, pushing aside a low-hanging cedar branch. He purposely let it go before Rick could pass, smirking at the noise Rick made when snow swung off the branch and dusted him. The hunter glanced back to see him brushing off his coat.

“Keep it up and see what happens,” Rick said.

“That a threat?” Daryl asked, his breath briefly clouding the air before him.

“Mhm.”   
  
“And what are you gonna do to me, Mr. Mayor?”   
  
Their boots crunched farther into the woods while Daryl kept his eyes peeled for tracks. It hadn’t snowed often in his patch of Georgia growing up, but when it had, it had made for easy tracking. The group could use easy at the moment. 

“I’ll kiss you in front of everyone,” Rick finally said.

It wasn’t much of a threat. Their relationship hadn’t been a secret since Jesus found them in bed together and inadvertently informed Carl. And they’d kissed in front of others once or twice before when emotions had overcome both of them and forced the rest of the world into the background.

But Daryl hated public displays of affection beyond a gentle nudge or light kick against his own foot. And so that was usually as far as he and Rick went when they weren’t alone.   
  
“That so?”   
  
“Mhm,” Rick said. “A big one. Messy and sloppy. Lots of t-”  
  
Daryl cut him off with nothing more than his pointer finger in the air. Rick immediately fell quiet and stopped moving, and Daryl didn’t need to see his partner to know that he was already scanning the woods for whatever it was that had made his lover pause.

In this case it was two whatevers. One was the perfect set of deer prints leading between two nearby trees. The other was a walker propped against an oak about ten yards to their left. Daryl chose it first since the tracks went in the other direction, cautiously approaching despite knowing cold weather slowed them down.

“Well, that’s new,” Rick said quietly behind him. “Maybe someone else took it out. I think Sasha and Abe came out a few days before the storm to fish in the stream.”

Knowing it would take more than one bite for anything to get through the layers of clothing he had on, Daryl went ahead and reached out, dusting the snow off its head in search for a knife or bullet wound. He found nothing save an obvious bite wound under its ear.   
  
“Thing’s frozen solid,” Daryl said, squatting down for a closer look. He pushed on the walker’s arm with a gloved finger and found skin like stone. There was something unsettling about it. Its eyes were still open, and something told Daryl that it was still kicking, watching him and wanting him despite the fact that it couldn’t move. He pulled his hunting knife out and stabbed it through the ear, swearing at how much force it took to imbed his knife in its skull.

“If the weather stays like this without getting worse, maybe we should comb the area and get as many as we can while they’re like this,” Rick said. “Less to deal with when it warms up again.”   
  
“Maybe,” Daryl said, standing up and shaking the pain out of his hand. He glanced back at Rick. There was still snow clinging to the ends of his beard from the tree branch. Other than the bright colors around his neck, he looked every bit like a part of the woods. A grizzly mountain man who could survive a blizzard with two sticks and a pine cone.   
  
Daryl’s heart throbbed in his chest. How there were still moments when his love for Rick completely overwhelmed him, he’d never understand. He tilted his head down, inhaling the cold air to compose himself. But Rick knew. Or maybe he’d just felt it too.

Arms that felt more like pillows beneath layers of coat and flannel surrounded him. Gloved fingertips squeezed at his neck beneath his scarf. He didn’t feel Rick’s warmth until their cheeks had pressed against one another’s long enough to push away the cold.

“I love you too,” Rick said quietly.

“Sentimental old fart,” Daryl said, even as he tried his best to find the other man’s scent though all the fabric.

“What are the tracks?” Rick asked, nuzzling against him so subtly that anyone observing them would have missed it.   
  
“Deer,” Daryl said, pulling away. He looked at Rick’s lips and hesitantly leaned forward to kiss them. He was still getting the hang of initiating hugs and kisses despite the fact that he woke up in the other man’s arms every morning. Rick smiled against his mouth.

“Should we go get it?” he asked, petting Daryl’s head beneath his gray skullcap.

“Should,” he said, turning away from Rick and toward the prints.

It took them two hours of trekking into parts of the woods neither of them had been to before to find the doe sipping water from a stream. The second Daryl saw her, he frowned, leaving his crossbow hanging down at his side.

“Shit.”   
  
“What’s wrong?”   
  
“Can’t do it,” he said. “Not this one.”   
  
“Why not?" Rick asked.   
  
“Look at her belly.” Daryl pointed, tracing the bulging middle of the doe in the air. Rick understood almost instantly. He always did.   
  
“She’s pregnant.”   
  
“Very,” he said. He wasn’t a veterinarian, but he’d wager she was going to have her babies within a couple of weeks.

“We’ll find something else,” Rick said. “We need to let them breed out here as much as possible. Just makes sense.”

“We can follow the stream a ways,” Daryl said. “Plenty of daylight left.”   
  
“Lead the way, darlin.”   
  
Following the stream turned out to be a good bet. They didn’t find another deer, but Daryl ended up with several wild rabbits hanging from his middle. Rabbit would make for a hearty stew and maybe something warm for Judith’s feet. It would be enough for a little while. 

“You got your watch?” Daryl asked, after he’d tied the third to his belt. He covered over drops of red with his boot. The world was too beautiful in its current state to leave blood on the snow.   
  
“Mhm.”   
  
“We’ll go another half hour and turn back. Keep an eye on it.”   
  
“Done.”   
  
The rhythmic sound of boots on snow blended into the gentle trickle of the stream as Daryl and Rick kept going. Every now and then, the occasional redbird would flit from one snow covered branch to the next, catching Daryl’s eye. Somewhere nearby, a woodpecker worked diligently.   
  
He and Rick were about fifteen minutes into their half hour when the natural chaos of the forest gave way to neatly ordered rows of evergreen. The stream they'd been following ran beneath two lines of rusted barbed wire, the water cleanly dividing firs from spruces.

Daryl paused at the edge of the fence with Rick beside him, both of them gazing down the center of a row.

“Wow,” was all the former sheriff had to say. And it fit. Every single tree had a light dusting of snow, the effect so picturesque Daryl found his fingers itching for a camera despite the fact that he’d always been more of the live-in-the-moment type.

“Rick,” Daryl said finally, when he was sure he’d memorized the scene enough that he'd never forget it. “What month do you reckon it is?”   
  
The hunter didn’t wait for an answer, already slipping off his backpack. He dug around an emergency blanket and a can of peas before finding a pair of wire cutters. A couple of labored snips made them an easy path into the tree farm.   
  
“What are you d- well hi to you too, sugar.” Rick smirked as Daryl reached for his duty belt, grabbing and tugging on it so he could pull out the ax hanging from his boyfriend’s hip. Stepping back, Daryl jerked his head toward the backpack sitting on the snow.   
  
“Gonna need rope.”   
  
“What do you need rope for?” Rick called after him, but Daryl was already through the fence, walking through the row of trees until one caught his eye. It didn’t take long. A redbird flitting from a cluster of needles got his attention, and a quick look up and down the body of the tree made it clear how perfectly shaped it was despite years of being left unattended.   
  
Daryl gripped the ax tightly and swung low, digging it into the base of the tree. Another swing hit a different part of the trunk. Still, as erratic as his chops were, it only took him minutes to fell the tree. By the time he was done, Rick stood behind him, rope in one hand and Daryl’s pack in the other.   
  
Rick didn’t say anything, letting Daryl silently lead as they tied up the tree so they could work together to drag it back. Their muscles ached by the time they were halfway home, but neither of them complained.   
  
“Have I mentioned that I love you yet today?” Rick asked, hitching his half of the rope back up as they maneuvered through a particularly dense little patch of wood.   
  
“Maybe,” Daryl said, coaxing the fir between two trees with a series of tugs. “Wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

“I love you.” Rick turned around and tugged on his own rope too, the two of them working in tandem until the tree was through the gap. When it gave way, the momentum carried them both onto their backs in the snow. Daryl turned his head to find Rick laughing quietly, his body shaking with it.   
  
“Kids deserve something normal,” he said. “Something...”  
  
“Nice,” Rick supplied. “Something magical.”   
  
“Mhm,” Daryl said, keeping his other thought to himself because saying it out loud felt too much like he was daring the new world to rip their lives apart yet again.

A tradition. Something that suggests a tradition is even possible, that we’ll all make it from one year to the next to continue it.

“And what are we getting our daughter for her first Christmas?”   
  
Daryl stared at Rick, the two of them still on their backs in the snow. He felt it again, the painful tug on his heart that made him wish he could somehow meld with the man next to him. He’d never be able to hug him tight enough or kiss him hard enough to feel satisfied.

Their love was the insatiable kind. 

He reached over and covered Rick’s gloved hand with his own, squeezing it so tight he was surprised the other man didn’t flinch or protest. Instead, Rick turned his hand upward and squeezed back. The pain radiating through Daryl's palm was welcome.

“Rabbit fur boots,” Daryl said. _The promise of a future_ , he didn’t say. Even though he’d vowed a long time ago that little girl would grow up and love and feel and _live_ if it meant sacrificing everything he was.

He dipped his head, his mouth twitching when Rick gave his hand another squeeze.   
  
“She loves you too,” Rick said. Then together, they got up and started toward home again.   
  
By the time they reached the gate with their tree in tow, the snow had started to fall once more. 


End file.
